


It’s Tough to Have a Crush Or Five Times Andy Got Rejected

by cashewdani



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-31
Updated: 2007-08-31
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani





	It’s Tough to Have a Crush Or Five Times Andy Got Rejected

**She's Got a Smile That Heals Me**  
Andy had a student teacher come into his class when he was in second grade. Her name was Ms. Cunningham and she gave everyone a pencil on her first day. Somehow she knew Andy wanted the green one, and she gave it to him, even though Becky Sheldon asked for it first.

She smelled like cinnamon and sometimes brought in cookies on Friday if they were good. She smiled at Andy a lot, even if he got questions wrong, and told him he could always call on a friend to help if he wasn’t sure of the answer. Mrs. Williams never did, and she usually told Andy if he stopped daydreaming and paid attention he wouldn’t embarrass himself so much.

The day that Steven Johnson pushed Andy off the slide after calling him a retard, Ms. Cunningham walked him to the nurse. She held his hand while all of his scrapes were washed off and bandaged and told him it could be their little secret that he cried.

Andy’s older brother kept telling him that one day he wasn’t going to think girls were gross, and maybe Jeff was right, because he was completely head over heels for Ms. Cunningham.

He stole his mother’s copy of _Songs in the Attic_ and transcribed all of the lyrics to _She’s Got a Way_ into his take home journal. When Ms. Cunningham collected them the next day and said she couldn’t wait to get home and read everyone’s entries, he knew she meant she couldn’t wait to read his.

The following Monday everyone else got their journals back in their mailbox, but Andy’s only had a pink pass that meant you were wanted in the office. He checked that he had his lunch, because sometimes he forgot, but he had his _Transformers_ lunchbox.

When he got there Ms. Cunningham was waiting with the principal and his mother. They talked about what was right and not right to say to a teacher. And how Ms. Cunningham was a grown-up and Andy was just a little boy. Whenever they asked him if he understood, Andy just said yes, even though he really didn’t.

They eventually let him go back to class and that night at dinner his brothers both laughed at him, even Billy who was only four. His father asks if this Ms. Cunningham is really all that cute, and Andy starts to cry after catching his mother’s dirty look. He feels crushed, and he knows it must be bad because his mother lets him stay up and eat his chocolate ice cream in the living room.

The next day, Andy stopped raising his hand in class because he was afraid that Ms. Cunningham wouldn’t smile at him anymore and he doesn’t think he could take that.

When her placement is up, Ms. Cunningham hands out _Blow Pops_ with little thank you’s for being such a great class. Andy doesn’t even eat his even though grape is his favorite.

\---

His last semester at Cornell, someone suggests they do _She’s Got a Way_ for the _Rock-A-Pella_ Festival, and Andy vetoes the notion as cliché and sentimental. They end up doing it anyway, so Andy only fakes the harmonies.

 

 **Still Catch Me Dancing In It**  
Andy takes his little brother to see _Edward Scissorhands_ when it comes out. Billy has nightmares for about a week and a half. Andy has dreams about Winona Ryder.

He writes her a letter and tells her that he likes the way that she chose Edward over her muscled boyfriend. If she thinks other girls might make that same choice, to be with the nice guy instead of the football player. Not that he likes Samantha Jones anywhere near as much as he likes her. He mentions that he knows there’s an age difference, but that he’s very mature.

Winona never writes back, and he eventually learns that she’s dating Johnny Depp in real life too. And Samantha never breaks up with the quarterback either.

 

 **You Taste Like a Burger. I Don't Like You Anymore**  
Andy meets Jessica at the sleep away camp he works at before leaving for college. She teaches interpretive dance and they wind up being in charge of the end of the summer talent show together after his boss hears him singing around the campfire.

Jessica asks him to start sitting with her in the mess hall, to meet her out at the lake after lights off. She talks to him a lot, especially about her ex-boyfriend, who Andy agrees was totally not good enough for her. When she cries during _The Lion King_ that they’re forced into seeing because it rains one day, she thanks him for not making a big deal about it.

They work really well together and Andy loves the way the freckles on her face keep getting darker as the weeks go by. He writes his best friend Seth and calls Jessica his girlfriend. When Seth writes back and asks how far things have gone, Andy knows he’s going to have to make a move.

One night while they’re trying to change the lyrics of _I’ll Make Love to You_ to be about the Color War, Andy leans over and kisses her. She doesn’t kiss him back.

“Andy, I thought you were gay!” He’s too mortified to ask her what left her with that impression.

He drops out of the show planning, and tells Seth that he decided he wants to go to college unattached in the next letter he mails.

 

 **Alcohol: The Cause of and Solution to All Life's Problems**  
Sophomore year someone on Andy’s floor knows where to get fake ID’s and just like that he becomes Jason Gibson from Massachusetts. He’s born on March 12 and lives at 74 Holly Road. And he can buy as much Natty Ice and Popov as he wants.

One Thursday night, there’s a mixer, or a social, or possibly a foreign language pot-luck in the lounge. Andy’s not really sure, there are so many flyers hanging up all over the hallways. But they all advertise free food, and so once he gets there he pretends to care about getting the poet laureate at the school to get a slice of pizza.

Renée is there, who lives on the second floor and who sometimes invites him to watch _Friends_ with her and her roommate, Claire. He walks over to her, shooting out a, “How you doin?” that he must say is pretty spot on and she laughs.

When the speaker has finally finished discussing what a wonderful event the literary society can plan, she asks him to come back to her room. And if he could bring that handle of vodka she knows he bought last weekend to make Jello shots for _The C Sharps_ party, that would be awesome.

When he gets there, she’s watching _Home Alone_ on TV. He does his best impression of Kevin applying aftershave, and she smiles, removing the alcohol from his backpack. She tells him to sit on the bed and pours them each some orange juice and vodka into two glasses stolen directly from the dining hall.

“Where’s Claire?”

“In Buffalo visiting her boyfriend. Again. Ugh, I wish she’d just transfer there already.” Andy likes Claire, but it seems like the wrong time to say that. “I don’t know. It’s just like I feel she flaunts it in my face. Whatever, a toast.”

“What are we toasting?”

“Opportunities.” He doesn’t get it, but he clinks glasses with her in the spirit of the whole thing.

Renée finishes hers before Kevin’s parents even notice he’s missing, and pours herself another, less juice and more vodka. She then suggests they start taking a sip every time someone gets hurt. Two sips if it’s an emotional kind of hurt. Three if the person should have technically died from their injuries.

Andy had forgotten what a violent movie this is considering it’s meant for children. By the time the credits are rolling, his head feels really fuzzy and Renée is laughing about something he missed.

And then she’s kissing him. Sloppy and with a little too much tongue and tasting like orange nail polish remover. She grabs his wrist and guides his hand under her tank top. “Andy. Andy. I seriously want you.”

Andy thinks of himself as a gentleman, and part of that means not saying no to a lady. Still, he kind of thought that losing his virginity would mean something, and that he wouldn’t be so drunk when it happened.

The next morning Renée tells him that she was just tired of being the only virgin out of all her friends and that she knew he was a nice guy. Then she asked him to leave because she was sure she was going to puke and she didn’t want him to see her like that.

Andy only starts getting asked to watch _Friends_ again once Claire had broken up with her boyfriend and spends all of her time in the room curled up on her bed.

He doesn’t go because he’s sick of being the nice guy.

 

 **Oh Honey, I Would, But... I Don't Want To**  
The new girl who he’s supposed to be showing the ropes is pretty much super hot. Which is why he can’t help himself from exclaiming, “Wow Karen!” when she takes off her jacket. She shoots him a dirty look.

“Andy, if we’re going to be working together that’s not going to fly. Alright?”

“Of course m’lady. But may I say…”

“No. You may not.” She sits down at her computer and refuses to look at him even though he keeps sending her instant messages about where he could take her out to dinner to give her a sense of Stamford.


End file.
